Dark Zone

10

Karr frowned at Stephens when he failed to leave the room with the encrypted phone. “Come on now. Play by the rules,” he told the CIA officer.

“OK,” said Stephens. “But maybe I’ve bugged the phone.”

“I wouldn’t put it past you.” He waited until Stephens had left the room, then got up from the chair. “Come on, Charlie.”

Dean had just sat down in one of the swivel chairs in front of a row of computer terminals on the other side of the room. He seemed reluctant to get up.

“Jet lag get to you?” Karr asked the older man. “Come on, we’ll walk it off.”

“Where are we going?”

“Avoiding a half hour of trading put-downs with Stephens,” said Karr.

“Is he supposed to debrief us?”

“He’s probably supposed to try,” said Karr. “Don’t worry. He won’t get in trouble if we walk. He was parked here after some problems in Georgia. Basically he was shell-shocked and they go easy on him.”

Karr led Dean down the hallway to a back set of stairs and then out through a side entrance. When they reached the driveway, Karr threw the guards a salute and strolled out onto the sidewalk. It was past 6:00 p.m. and starting to get dark. He took a moment to get his bearings, then started toward what he thought was the nearest tube, or subway, stop, Bond Street. He’d only taken a few steps when, turning to see if Dean was keeping up, he spotted an empty taxi.

“Yo, cab!” he yelled, more like a New Yorker than a Londoner. He paused at the window, telling the driver that he wanted to find the best steak and kidney pie in the city. When the driver asked if he was a crazy Yank, Karr replied cheerfully that he was.

“And a hungry one. I was going to have fish and chips, but I think I need something thick against these ribs. I’m in your hands.”

Inside the cab, Karr reached to his belt and clicked on the communications system. A woman’s voice, raspy with a cold, reverberated against the bones of his skull.

“Where have you been?” demanded Sandy Chafetz, their runner back in the Deep Black Art Room. “Why did you turn the com system off?”

Karr did what he always did when a runner asked a stupid question — he ignored it.

“Hey, Charlie, you got that room key?” he asked, digging into his pocket for his handheld computer and a small attachment that allowed him to send video directly from the unit. Snapping them together, he took the key from Dean and panned it for the camera.

“Got it?” he asked Chafetz. Karr liked Chafetz — she was a lot easier on the eyes than Rockman — but she wasn’t quite as sharp as the other runner, nor was she as good at marshaling resources. Karr thought this might be because she was a little too chummy with the “backbenchers”—the analysts and mission specialists assigned to various duties who worked behind her in the Art Room. You had to whip some of those guys to get them to give you information that didn’t need to be translated from geekese.

“I have it,” she told him. “We’re analyzing it now. What hotel is it?”

Karr laughed. “Jeez Louise, if I knew, I wouldn’t be asking.” He handed the key back to Dean and then leaned forward. “So, driver, where’s this restaurant you’re taking us to again?”

“Over in Covent Garden,” said the cabbie.

“It’s not a tourist trap, right?”

The driver began to protest. Karr laughed at him, then glanced at Charlie Dean. “You going to fall asleep? Your eyelids are just about glued together.”

“Long day.”

“The good ones always are,” said Karr.

“A hotel called the Renaissance,” reported Chafetz. “On Holburn.”

“Holburn.” Karr leaned forward. “You know what, driver? We’re going to have to make a detour. Do you know a place called the Renaissance Hotel? It’s on Holburn? That’s near Covent Garden more or less, right?”

“More or less.”

“You can just drop us off there. But give me the address for that steak and kidney pie before you drop us off.”

Dean waited for Karr to tip the driver, then followed him past the three doormen and into the hotel. The Renaissance had once been an insurance company’s headquarters but now was a well-appointed hotel perched between the business, legal, and theater districts, catering to visitors of all three. The floors were rich marble, the wall panels thick wood. They took a right at the door; the desk was straight across, but Karr just gave one of his waves toward the receptionist and went directly to the elevator. Apparently he was following directions from the Art Room, which could communicate with each field op separately or together on a conferenced channel. When the elevator arrived, the two men stepped in; they were alone in the car.

“Put that door key in the slot on the right,” Karr told him. “See that? The Renaissance floor?”

Dean pushed it in. A light blinked next to the slot and the elevator began moving upward.

“Pretty fancy place,” said Karr.

“Maybe we should get a room,” said Dean.

“Never sneak the bill past Rubens. We’re lucky we don’t have to stay at Motel 6.”

The elevator stopped on a private floor, where guests who had reserved the premier-tier rooms had their own lounge and other facilities, including a spa and a concierge on twenty-four-hour duty. The latter stepped forward now, apologizing that the lounge had closed for the evening.

“Thanks,” said Karr. “Just wanted to impress my friend. Definitely worth the extra freight.”

The concierge grimaced momentarily but then turned to Dean and assured him that the guest services were top-notch. Karr played up the stereotypical noisy Yank routine, stepping over to the room on the right and looking around. The concierge offered to give Dean a tour; Karr answered that it wasn’t necessary and led Dean back to the elevator.

“What was that all about?” asked Dean as they headed to the tenth floor.

“We needed to insert the card into a reader so the Art Room could scan it,” he explained. “I was just killing time until they got everything worked out. It works like an ATM card. The whole system is computerized, which lets the staff downstairs change the locks by just punching a few keys. Fortunately, it also allows the Art Room to open doors for us. Tenth floor, room one-oh-one-one.”

People thought of the NSA as an agency of snoopers and eavesdroppers. From what Dean had seen, it was more like the biggest club of hackers in the world.

They found the room quickly. While Dean played lookout, Karr retrieved a small fiber-optic device and a long wire from the bottom of his belt — a telescoping video camera, equipped with a miniature fisheye lens for checking out a room that might be booby-trapped. But as small and thin as the device was, he had trouble pushing it under the door, which was fitted very closely to the threshold.

Just as he finally got it, the Art Room warned Dean that the elevator was arriving.

“I’ll slow them down,” said Dean, striding quickly down the corridor toward the elevator foyer. He got there as the door opened, paused a second, then turned the corner just in time to “accidentally” plow into one of the guests.

Unfortunately, it was a nine-year-old girl, and he just barely managed to grab her before she fell. She looked at him, panic-stricken.

“Hey, watch it!” shouted the father.

“I’m sorry,” said Dean to the girl. He lowered himself to eye-level. “Are you OK?”

The girl started to cry. She turned; her mother gathered her into her arms. Both parents looked at him as if he were a masher.

“I’m sorry,” said Dean, still holding her.

“Let go of her,” said the father. He stood perhaps five-seven to Dean’s six feet but nonetheless looked as if he wanted to fight. He had an Irish lilt to his voice.

“It was an accident,” said Dean, letting go of the girl. “I’m sorry.”

“Be more careful next time,” hissed the man. He put his hand on his wife’s shoulder and pushed her along to the hall. Dean turned and watched them walk down the hall.

Karr had disappeared.

Dean ducked back in the vestibule where the elevators were, pressed the button, and waited. Two older women were in the car when it arrived; he got in, saw that the lobby button was already lit, and stood toward the back. When the elevator arrived, he walked out, then pretended to check his pocket and realize he had forgotten something. He twirled around, pulling the card key out of his pocket and playing with it as he waited for the elevator.

He wasn’t as good an actor as Karr, he thought. But he could play a part if he had to.

Back on the tenth floor, the hallway was empty. Dean walked slowly, hesitating when he reached the room; the door was closed. Rather than going in he started walking again.

“Karr?”

“He’s in the room, Charlie,” said Chafetz. “Before you go in, post a video fly in the wall sconce or something. There aren’t any video cameras in any of the hallways and we can’t see what’s going on. Tommy didn’t have a chance.”

Dean slipped a fly — a tiny bugging device roughly the size and shape of a dime — out of his pants pocket and wedged it carefully at the top of the lighting fixture.

Inside the room, Karr knelt in front of the fake wardrobe, which hid a large television set and a set of drawers. To the right of the drawers was a safe; the Deep Black op was using his handheld computer to listen to the tumblers on the safe. With a handkerchief on his hand, he pushed down the handle and pulled the door open; the safe was empty.

“I figured.” Karr closed it, spun the combination, then returned the dial to the number that had been set when he began. “Check the loo, would you? The WC?”

Dean went into the bathroom. The soap had been opened, but nothing else. A hotel bathrobe hung on the hanger behind the door; it didn’t look as if it had been used, and its pocket was empty. Dean went to the wastepaper basket, which had a wrapper and some tissues. He examined the wrapper: it was for candy, a fancy piece of glossy paper with a shiny picture, the sort of thing you put around a one-cent piece of flavored sugar so you can charge twenty cents.

A small striped box sat at the bottom of the basket. Dean took it out and looked at it; it had the name “Hediard” on it. The word Paris was in the logo.

“Hediard,” said Dean.

“You talking to us, Charlie?” asked his runner.

“There’s a box. It has an address. Twenty-one place de la Madeleine, Paris. It may have been for candy.”

Chafetz corrected his pronunciation, then told him that Hediard was a very fancy gourmet food shop.

“In Paris,” she added. “Oo-la-la. Treats for the sweet.”

“Message on the phone,” said Karr out in the room, pointing to the blinking light. “Want to listen in?”

“Take a second,” said Chafetz.

While the Art Room worked on that, Karr opened the bureau and looked for something — anything — in the drawers. They were empty.

“Here you go,” said Chafetz, piping the phone message in over their communications system.

“Waterloo at eight,” said a male voice. It had a foreign accent — maybe French, maybe Italian, maybe anything; Dean couldn’t place it. There was a time stamp on the message; the call had been made fifteen minutes before 2:00 p.m., undoubtedly when the occupant was en route to the park.

“What’s it mean?” Dean asked.

“Waterloo train station,” said Karr. “You think that’s tonight or tomorrow?”

“If it’s tonight, we ought to get moving.”

“Yeah.” Karr groaned. The drawers were empty, as was the dead man’s suitcase. There were no papers or anything else that might vaguely relate to the man’s identity or mission here.

“The room was registered to Gordon Kensworth,” said Chafetz. “We’re checking the credit card data now.”

“Sounds British,” said Karr.

“Maybe. The address he registered with doesn’t wash,” added the runner. “What a surprise.”

“I found this,” said Dean, handing Karr the candy box and wrapper.

“Sweet tooth,” said Karr. He looked at it for a minute. “So he was in Paris, or knew someone who was. Better put it back where you got it.” He looked at his watch. “We have about twenty minutes to get to the train station, which is about twenty less than we need. Leave the room key on the desk over there. They’ll add ten pounds to the poor guy’s bill if we just toss it away.”